


That's my son you've got there!

by justsomerain



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Gift Fic, Hansen Family Feels, Tumblr: jaegercon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:11:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justsomerain/pseuds/justsomerain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Chuck is five, he looks at him, blankly. He’d just come back from deployment, six months in the sandy hell that is Afghanistan. He’d missed his birthday, his first day at school, and a hundred and one little things. Kids grow up fast, and he’s had to miss big parts of his son growing up. Chuck looks at him, blankly, and asks his mother who the strange man is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's my son you've got there!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madness_and_smiles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madness_and_smiles/gifts).



> Updated the "to:" to display the correct username. Also, as you might have guessed, this was for Jaegercon. It's also my first non-smut in years ahahahaha, but I couldn't not write Hansen feels.

When Chuck is five, he looks at him, blankly. He’d just come back from deployment, six months in the sandy hell that is Afghanistan. He’d missed his birthday, his first day at school, and a hundred and one little things. Kids grow up fast, and he’s had to miss big parts of his son growing up. Chuck looks at him, blankly, and asks his mother who the strange man is.

 

When Chuck is nine years old, he’s glued to the television, face a mix of fear and horror and excitement. It’s August, and in the United States a monster has landed, taller than a highrise, destroying the Golden Gate Bridge. Herc’s been home for two months now, and despite being home more often than when Chuck was little, he still misses things. When he left, he had two rows of incisors, and he had pretended to be a shark when playing, and now there was just one row, finally rid of all his baby teeth. Herc looks at his son, the kid’s mouth slightly open, front teeth seemingly too big for his mouth. For a moment he sits, just looking, before walking out of the room, to pick up his phone. Work calls.

 

Chuck’s only ten years old when the fourth son of a bitch Kaiju attacks. This time, Herc’s heart almost stands still when he hears the news. Sydney. He’s on duty, Chuck at school, Angela at work, and only an hour to evacuate. The choice tears at his heart and soul, and he knows he won’t be able to live with himself regardless of the choice. He saves Chuck, only just in time before the strike against the monster, against Scissure.

 

It’s a week before the news really comes through to him, and Chuck has not said a word to him since he picked him up, saved his life. Angela is dead, Chuck half an orphan, he a widower. He can hear his son crying at night, and raging during the day, and he can’t say anything. There’s not even a body to be buried.

 

Another year passes, and Herc and his brother, Scott, sign up for Jaeger Academy, test pilots for the enormous robots, no, mechs, that are supposed to be the way to defeat the Kaiju. Chuck comes with them, and goes to the school on site. He’s twelve years old, all gangly limbs and awkwardness, and Herc can’t do anything but hope his son does well, as he learns new things too.

 

When Chuck is fifteen, Herc catches a glimpse of something he shouldn’t have, Drifting with Scott. He was never the wisest, but what he’s done now, Chuck can’t bear. He might be his brother, but Herc reports him to the PPDC. They have a fight, and Scott leaves, back to Australia, leaving behind Herc and Chuck. Chuck: fifteen, and determined as all hell he’ll be a Ranger. He can’t help but wonder sometimes if he is as good a father as he thinks. At fifteen you might want all the freedom you can get, but his son is an awfully cocky kid. But then, after moments, he’ll always shake his head, realising his son only deserves the best, if only to make up for having to grow up without his mother.

At sixteen, Chuck is the youngest Ranger in the Corps to enlist. Herc shakes his head; before all this had started happening, his son would have been in school, maybe looking at universities. But such idle thought are useless, and he sees his son rising, best in class, top of the ranks. When he graduates, he gets teamed up with his old man, not his father, not his dad. His “old man”. Herc bows his head, and accepts it, his punishment for not saving them both.

 

They have done ten runs before the Jaeger Program is shut down, Chuck is twenty-one, and cocksure, arrogant, and if Herc has to be honest, not the person he had hoped his son would be. But there is nothing he can do, his son is who he is, and perhaps, if he had been a better father…

 

Hong Kong is empty. The last time he had been there, at least three quarters of the bays were filled, and now it’s just them, in Striker, the Chinese, the Russians, and the recommissioned Gipsy Danger, as Stacker Pentecost’s last bid for the rescue of the human race. The surviving Becket, Raleigh, is a good kid, and when he says he knew what it was Chuck had needed growing up, Herc feels remorse. Perhaps he should have been stricter, but damnit, Chuck was twenty-one, and a damn fine Ranger.

Herc breaks his arm during the defense of Hong Kong. Chuck is twenty-one, and now he has to go without him. He wants to yell and rage, his son going without him. He knows he’s not been the best father, and the only time they have anything resembling normal contact is in the Drift, but damnit, it’s his son.

When he walks away, he wants to stop him, his boy, to hug his son, and apologise for being a terrible father. When he was five years old, and asked Angela who Herc was; when he was nine years old, glued to the television in horror; at ten mourning the loss of his mother; at twelve going to high school; at fifteen stubborn; at seventeen a Ranger; and now, at twenty-one, and about to die.


End file.
